Saturday, May 15, 2010

Spot the Minister

One of the aspirations any government has is to try to spread ministerial appointments across the country. There are already mutterings from East Anglia that Norfolk and Suffolk have lost out, with only a single minister (Henry Bellingham). But they are not as badly off as the North East, which has no ministers at all, and the North whose only Ministera are Nick Clegg and William Hague. Here is the breakdown of the appointments announced so far...

My goodness, gender balance, regional balance, left/right balance, old/young balance, Cons/Lib balance, get them ALL right and you will have a severely UNbalanced government.

And if you do go for multi-gender balances, would you have to allow for butch lesbians as well as submissive ones (if that is the right set of opposites ?) and similar for male gays ?

How about this : The most balanced person I know to run MY life is me, and I would assume that to be true of most people. How about we are ALL elected to do things for ourselves, only then the "government" be truly representative of the WHOLE nation.

What is wrong with ability as a tool by which to select people ?

Let us please let government (whoever they are) get on with it. We have become so used to whinging over the last 13 years it seems very hard to get out of the habit.

It is hard to follow your numbers since you have not used official Government regions (which are the Home Counties?) and I assume that North = Yorkshire and Humberside. In which case seems a bit odd not to include Bs Warsi (of Dewsbury) - which makes 3 Cabinet Mins from Yorkshire, probably a statistical over-representation!

Oh great! So you want to resurrect the north/south wars all on your own!

Since when have statistics like this been important?

There are a number of MPs / Lords to choose from, if that list is then split into "take three from there, two from there, five from there" irrespective of ability and suitability then the end result is weakened and expertise diminished.

It has to be the right/best person for the job - nothing else. You've surely argued for this in the past, why are you changing your tune?

I am positively proud that the North East is the only mainland region to have not a single MP as a Minister in this Government.

Numerous people sitting for safe seats here held office in the New Labour years, from Tony Blair down and including David Miliband. Credit crunch or no credit crunch, we always had the boarded up shop fronts to show for it.

Wasn't it the 'inclusion' bollocks that caused some of the grief over the past 13 years?

Employ people for what they can do, not because they're a bisexual single mother from Islington living off benefits.

If the party member for Islington South happens to be female, has a kid, and her current partner is female, and knows how to deal with some aspect of the economy, fine, employ her, but don't just because she's missing experience in that last criteria (criterion?)